Rhinluch

The suffix luch is used to describe several wet areas in the state of Brandenburg, in which, prior to the advent of modern drainage systems, water remained largely stagnant rather than flowing.

In the land that makes up the present-day Rhinluch, lakes initially formed in individual places, especially where there were dead ice kettle holes.

The shape of this nut is not round, however, nor even oval or elliptical, but mushroom-shaped; like a mushroom with a short, fat stem, wide umbrella-shaped cap and a large cone-shaped root.

This relatively narrow connecting strip that corresponds to the stem of the mushroom arose when the sandy plateaux to the left and right of the Luch bottom (Luchgrund) were pushed into the swamps.

These two Ländchen ["little lands"] are old seats of culture, and their capitals, Fehrbellin and Friesack, were already named when both swamps still resembled lakes that, during the summer time, dried out into an unhealthy, unsafe swampland.